After the 2000 election one might think that everyone in the world understands how an American president is elected. For those who don’t remember or don’t understand, electors are allocated to each state based on how many congressmen and senators that state has. For example, South Dakota has one congressman and two senators, and is therefore entitled to 3 electoral votes. Therefore, with the total number of congressmen being 435 and there being 100 senators, along with three electors allocated by Constitutional amendment to Washington D.C., there are total of 538 electors.
So how far off from the popular vote could an electoral vote get? To figure this out, you need to know how many voters there are in each state and the number of electors per state. 270 electors can be gotten by winning evenly 50% of the votes in the 11 largest states in the Union. If the loser were to take 50%-1 vote in those states, plus all the votes in the other states, using 2008 voter information, the winner would need only 43 million votes, while the loser could have over 110 million, or 71% of all the votes. This is how President Bush won the election 2001 but lost the popular vote.
The electoral system almost always produces less dramatic results that do not mirror the popular vote. Let’s look at a few percentages:
| >Year | Who | Winner Electoral Votes | Loser Electoral Votes | Percentage Electoral Win/Loss | Winner Popular Votes | Loser Popular Votes | Percentage Popular Win/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1904 | Roosevelt v. Parker | 336 | 140 | 70.6%/39.4 | 7,630,457 | 5,083,880 | 56.4%/37.6% |
| 1908 | Taft v. Bryan | 321 | 162 | 66%/34% | 7,678,395 | 6,408,984 | 51.6%/43.0% |
| 1912 | Wilson v. Roosevelt | 435 | 88 | 82%/17% | 6,296,284 | 4,122,721 | 41.8%/27.4% |
| 1916 | Wilson v. Hughes | 277 | 254 | 52%/48% | 9,126,868 | 8,548,728 | 49.2%/46.1% |
| 1920 | Harding v. Cox | 404 | 127 | 76%/24% | 16,144,093 | 9,139,661 | 60.3%/34.1% |
| 1924 | Collidge v. Davis/Follette | 382 | 149 | 72%/28% | 15,723,789 | 13,217,948 | 54%/45.4 |
| 1928 | Hoover v. Smith | 444 | 87 | 84%/16% | 21,427,123 | 15,015,464 | 58.2%/40.8% |
| 1932 | Roosevelt v. Hoover | 472 | 59 | 89%/11% | 22,281,277 | 15,761,254 | 57.4%/39.7% |
| 1936 | Roosevelt v. Landon | 523 | 8 | 98%/2% | 27,752,648 | 16,681,862 | 61%/37% |
| 1940 | Roosevelt v. Wilkie | 449 | 82 | 85%/15% | 27,313,945 | 22,347,744 | 54.7%/44.7% |
| 1944 | Roosevelt v. Dewey | 432 | 99 | 81%/19% | 25,612,916 | 22,017,929 | 53.4%/45.9% |
| 1948 | Truman v. Dewey/Thurmond | 303 | 228 | 57%/43% | 24,179,347 | 23,167,222 | 49.6%/47.5% |
| 1952 | Eisenhauer v. Stevenson | 442 | 89 | 83%/17% | 34,075,529 | 27,375,090 | 55%/44% |
| 1956 | Eisenhauer v. Stevenson | 457 | 73 | 86%/14% | 35,579,180 | 26,028,028 | 57%/24% |
| 1960 | Kennedy v. Nixon | 303 | 219 | 56.5%/40.9% | 34,220,911 | 34,108,157 | 49.7%/49.6% |
| 1964 | Johnson v. Goldwater | 486 | 52 | 90%/10% | 43,127,041 | 27,175,754 | 61%/39% |
| 1968 | Nixon v. Humphrey/Wallace | 301 | 191 + 96 | 56%/36%/18% | 31,783,783 | 41,172,957 (total) | 43.4%/56.2% |
| 1972 | Nixon v. McGovern | 520 | 17 | 97%/3% | 47,168,710 | 29,173,222 | 61%/38% |
| 1976 | Carter v. Ford | 297 | 240 | 55%/45% | 40,831,881 | 39,148,634 | 50.1%/48.0% |
| 1980 | Reagan v. Carter | 489 | 49 | 91%/9% | 43,903,230 | 35,480,115 | 50.7%/41.0% |
| 1984 | Reagan v. Mondale | 525 | 13 | 98%/2% | 54,455,472 | 37,577,352 | 59%/41% |
| 1988 | Bush v. Dukakis | 426 | 111 | 79%/21% | 48,886,597 | 41,809,476 | 53.4%/45.7% |
| 1992 | Clinton v. Bush | 370 | 168 | 69%/31% | 44,909,806 | 39,104,550 | 43%/37.5% |
| 1996 | Clinton v. Dole | 379 | 159 | 70%/30% | 47,401,185 | 39,197,469 | 49.2%/40.7% |
| 2000 | Bush v. Gore | 271 | 266 | 50.4%/49.6% | 50,456,002 | 50,999,897 | 47.9%/48.4% |
| 2004 | Bush v. Kerry | 286 | 251 | 53%/47% | 62,040,610 | 59,028,444 | 50.7%/48.3% |
| 2008 | Obama v. McCain | 365 | 173 | 68%/32% | 69,456,897 | 59,934,814[ | 53%/46% |
In this table, the closest the popular and electoral votes come together is in 1916, although Bush v. Kerry comes close.
So what do we learn from all of this? I see two key messages:
- The nature of the electoral voting system wildly distorts popular will in favor of each state getting at least some voice. This was, after all, the reason for its design.
- National polls are, at best, a finger in the wind, and may be entirely misleading.
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